Uninspired

Hi All,

This site is not dead. I promise! I’ve had some sick family members this year and I’ve been travelling A LOT doing hospice care. I have a bunch of half-written posts that I hope to get done soon.

During all this travel I read a fantabulous book called Bitter is the New Black by Jennifer Lancaster. If you’ve ever been laid-off and are slightly bitter about it, you must read this book. The author also goes down in my list of Fearless People. Her priorities changed a lot after her experience and she took the leap to become a writer instead of continuing to sign up for jobs that made her unhappy, but paid the rent. AND it seems to be working out for her. You can read her blog at http://www.jennsylvania.com/.  I suggest you pour yourself a nice martini and settle into the couch with your lap-top while you peruse her blog. It will enhance the experience.

I was asked to write this for my current job’s newsletter. My family is always asking me what I do for a living, and rarely understands my response – so I thought it’d be good to reprint this here. Enjoy!

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These are some stories that I love. They didn’t happen to me, but I heard about them first hand from family and friends.

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Today I was reading about how television works, because I am now in the television industry. (Yes, I still work on software, but software for TV)

I like to think about how the user interface of stuff is designed. Why did the designer(s) think something was a good idea? What about the thing makes it so a certain design was chosen? Did the designer(s) understand their audience?

Another thing I think is very interesting is to watch how people use stuff. People use tools in ways that were never intended by the tool’s designers, and people do some pretty imaginative things to get around a tool’s design flaws.

Very rarely, have I found a software tool that just does what I need it to do without me having to spend extra time tweaking it. When developing software, is there a perspective that can help you create an intuitive tool that just works in an obvious way without the user having to invest extra time to get the tool to work?

Today, while reading about how television works, I was struck by a very simple analogy that helped me generate a quick list of things to think about as I design my next ‘get-rich quick’ widget. (OK…not my next…actually my first, but next makes me sound more credible.)
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So…how do you get through a bad day at work? A day where you are just really bored or something bad/frustrating happened, or where you just had a very hard time dragging your sorry butt out of bed?

Mony is a friend I met while working in the biology research lab. She played this game when she had a bad day or if I was complaining about a bad day. It really worked in cheering me up. I call it the “Would you rather…” game.

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This weekend I received a photo of my ex-boss’ butt in the mail.

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